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gods

The TPN (Telepathica Pacifica Network) provides the most reliable communications network, for tikis and all plant life, on the planet. The telepathic network has always been very busy, as tiki gods and goddesses chat incessantly like teenage mall rats. There are also the days when the houseplants, who share the TPN, also get busy on the horn. Sundays are especially hectic, when offshoots call their parent plants to assure themselves that they will remain in the will.

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Salad Days

T.K. Betelnut is a Tiki, half wood and half human, which allows him to be mobile. He is on a stake out, working for Interpol on an ocean view hillside overlooking Lanikai Beach in Hawaii. He spots something….

Waiting. Waiting.

Oh! What is this?

T.K. was scoping in on a fine little gynoecium growing on the hillside among the lowlife weeds and kudzu. She stood proudly above the shoreline.

It was a Monstera deliciosa. Not your average dime-a-dozen split-leaf philodendron. She was beautiful. T.K. was hypnotized. He’d never seen such lush foliage. Her big leaves swayed gracefully in the breeze, exposing a good portion of her divine stems. Movie star material.

T.K. soon realized: OMFTikiG, it is her! From television! I’ve got to alert the network! Marilyn Monstera! Someone had discarded Marilyn Monstera on the hillside! Dumped her like a slutty areca palm. And though she faced a scenic vista that any silly human would be glad to pay $500 a night plus airfare for—just the idea that she had been treated like common pond scum or athlete’s foot fungus—discarded like a boring fern, was an insult to her eminence.

Some ROF (rich old fart) had simply left her there, no doubt, when they were redesigning their fancy ROF home on the gated ROF section of Lanikai’s hillside.

The very patient, constipated, angry stick became angrier.

Marilyn Monstera (Lot#6532uhgy12) was the daughter of Hollywood royalty. A result of Plant Parenthood, her parents were famous as well. Marilyn’s mother, ZhuZhu appeared in nearly every scene in the Thin Man movies of the 1940s. Her father, Moe, acted throughout the 1960s in the Anette and Frankie Beach Party films. Both parents still live in the executive offices of Warner Bros. and had been featured on over two hundred and fifty movie sets. They also were fixtures on Hollywood’s best buffet tables where they sometimes rubbed stems with Bogart, Bacall, Cooper, et al.

Marilyn’s first TV appearance was with her father, Leif, on the Surf City Sinners series (1961–1965), which is still considered a classic of the “swingin’ sixties.”

In the first Surf City Sinners episode, “A Ding in My Heart,” Marilyn’s father is observed “flipping the stamen.” This gesture took Leif Monstera over four hours to complete during forty different takes bungled by two so-called teen idols, Hanky and Panky. Many of the Monstera’s friends and relatives saw the episode from their Southern California living rooms and let out a laugh that was only heard by other plant life over the TPN. A “plant laugh” can register among the botanicals for over a month.

After the stake-out, maybe he’d ask ‘sugar roots’ to take a spin with him in his new photosynthetic Chia.

Since he first saw Marilyn on TV in1961, T.K. Betelnut, like all other healthy male saplings his age, wanted to toss her salad with a fine vinaigrette.

Bernie had been asked his Interpol associate, T.K., to study up on the subject of Panpsychism (“All things have a soul”) before moving to Hawaii. He didn’t know why — until now. Bernie had a feeling that everything in Dauna Robinson’s office was alive. Dauna returned to the office and set her soft bottom upon the thrilled sill. Bernie’s heart paused in deep silent reverence for the wooden board. Dauna paused to light another happy cigarette and admire another bit of Hawaiian ‘scenery,’ derelicts sleeping in their pee on the sidewalks of Chinatown.

“SNAP OUT OF IT, BERNIE!” demanded a second woman’s voice from the ‘the Bernie file’ on Dauna’s desk.

Bernie jumped up, staring at the folder. “Dammit! Who the hell?”

“What is it, hun?” asked Dauna.

Both of them saw the image of the Virgin Mary spreading like a coffee stain across the manila folder. Uh, oh shit…sorry, ma’am, Bernie apologized to the folder. Mother Mary had appeared on his browser a couple of times, but the two never spoke. Mary scared all of her lonely son’s friends away with her icy condescending looks.

“I said snap out of it, cupcake! Or it’s your funeral!” said Mary.

“Funeral? Please! Not now!”

“Who are you talking to, hun?” asked Dauna. “Is there someone on the folder? It isn’t your new pal, lion chow, again, is it?”

“Lion chow? No. It’s his mom. Ms. Robinson, did you just call Mary’s son lion chow?”

Flat Mary rolled her eyes toward heaven and said in Latin, “Odio hoc canis (I hate this bitch).” The mother of God shook her haloed head in disgust and disappeared from the folder.

“P-leeeeeease, Ms. Holier-Than-Thou,” said Dauna. It seemed that Jesus’ mom had left the building. Dauna looked at Bernie, “Agent Benedict, let me tell you the truth about Mrs. Goody Two Sandals.”

“Who?”

“The Snow White of the desk set thinks that I’m trying to corrupt her precious little boy. Do you know what I think? I think that your melancholy hippie pal wants ‘a taste.’ The kid should be dating. Did you know that his dad, or mom, or their family cat cursed me with Tourette’s after I used the old man’s name in vain? So, I, Ms. Potty Mouth, have a free ticket to call Merkin Man whatever I want.”

“Merkin Man?” Merkin Man sounds like a commercial.

“What? Should I ask Mr. Love-In to forgive me? He knows that I’d just start cussing again.” She smiled at Bernie. “Do you know what? I think that it turns him on.” Dauna turned away and lit yet another overjoyed, happy-to-die cigarette. The small smooth scars on Dauna’s neck caught Bernie’s attention.

Dauna knew what the new agent was thinking, even as she faced the window. “On my island, we call these scars ‘shark hickeys.’”

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The statuesque goddess was enraged after seeing Bambi’s mother, a sacred deer, being slaughtered by the human hunter. The killer in the cartoon reminded her of the evil monster MacHeath.

Earlier, Artemis was feeling down because she could barely squeeze into her five-thousand-year-old tunic and had to find her new clothes in the big and tall women’s aisle of Walmart. Those shopping trips would be Artemis’ fatal fashion mistake. One muumuu that she tried on, in full view of the security camera that afternoon could have easily tented the Barnum & Bailey Circus including the freak show, concessions, games, the petting zoo and a calliope.

Zeus and Leto often watched Goddesses of Walmart for entertainment. That night they were horrified when they saw their daughter dressed in the giant muumuu while trolling the aisles for deals on chips and soda.

Then the following celestial evening, after 50,300 hits on YouTube the voguish goddess Leto was forced to watch (in shock and horror) a video of her daughter shopping while dressed in a hideous floral nightgown and tennis shoes.

The hotel phone rang.

Bernie picked it up and handed it to Artemis who was eating bon-bons on the couch. “It’s your dad.”

Artemis grabbed the phone. “Daddy?”

The voice on the phone was powerful enough for Bernie to hear every word. The voice was angry enough to generate lightning from the earpiece.

“Artie. Dear Artie. Your mom and I decided that you can’t come home until you lose weight and come to your fashion senses,” daddy Zeus had said. “And tell your hobo friend to hijack himself a new suit with real pants if he’s gonna paint the town with my baby. Bernie’s friend Frankie should have already told him that life’s too short to dress like a bum. And what the hell is that thing you’re drivin’?”

“Uh…” Munch, munch, munch. “Bernie rented a Chia.”

“Everyone up here thinks that you’ve gotten weak and out of control. We can’t afford to have the other deities think that the Olympians are pushovers.” Zeus shouted into the phone. “For gods and goddesses sakes, Art-Art, you used to knock ’em dead.”

“Art-Art?” Bernie heard that and giggled.

The goddess shot lethal optikos (eye) arrows at Bernie. “Shut up, sandal licker! No, not you, daddy. There is going to be an epic battle with MacHeath’s army, so I promised to help out Bernie and his trollop friend.”

Final judgment came to Artemis swiftly in a furious “bolt of rejection.” The bolt was hurled in the form of an angry text, with an angry minotaur emoji attached.

Artemis had just been officially banished from her home and family.

“What family, pop?” she texted back. “Do we even have a family name?”

“Good point, pumpkin. Let me ask your mom,” he wrote.

Back on Olympus, Zeus asked Leto, “Dear? What’s our last name?”

He texted Artemis, “You still there? Okay. Your mom says that our last name is ‘On High.’ We don’t need a last name, pumpkin, unlike the Kardashians. We’re bigger than Lady Gaga. We only use first names. Oh, your mom wants to know…what the hell kind of shoes were you wearing on the Walmart show?”

Zeus’ mighty presence was suddenly gone, and Artemis was hurt, and that meant that she needed tacos.

Artemis had become “an embarrassment” to the fashion-conscious Olympian gods, who were tolerant to a point, often turning their backs on lesser Olympian crimes, such as torture, mass murder, incest, rape, infanticide and eating one’s own children.

“Yes, I did.” Artemis sat up straight and tall. “I’m proud of my job. And it is my duty to defend my sister virgins. Being a goddess is what I do. Sometimes I have to smack filthy men down like mosquitos. Do you think that it’s an easy job? I had to go through all kinds of hell to finally get certified.”

“Certified? You’re kidding,”

Artemis’ tale unfolded. On her first day at Olympus High, she met God, The Big Cheese, who on that day, appeared to her as a popular redheaded cheerleader named Shelly. Shelly helped the tall gawky Artemis get adjusted to campus life. Artemis became the track and field champion at MOWSC, the Mount Olympus West Side College campus. Artemis then ranted on about her life after school. Her “shit jobs” with “shit bosses” and how she dabbled in real estate and interior design in ancient Helena. There was a second time that she ran into, and worked side by side with The Big Cheese in a Naple’s restaurant in 1889. This time he called himself Raffaele Esposito. “It sounded better that plain old God.” When Raffaele invented pizza, he declared that he’d “done enough” for mankind, said, “Fuck it,” and went back to his apartment.

“Why are you looking at me like that, Bernie?” Artemis covered herself with the sheet.

“You were there when God created pizza?”

“Thin crust was my idea. You should try my ricotta gnocchi with sausage and fennel sauce.”

“Marry me!”

“Marry? There are rules. If we are going to marry or mate, I’d have to kill you first. You being a mortal. Alas, it is my sad destiny to run through the heavens, alone, unfulfilled, and nearly naked…”

“Stop!”

“…for all time. As Artemis continued her sad tale of struggle—hands over her breasts, to the weak-willed Bernie, he, through all-American know-how and due diligence, had managed to sneak his right hand beneath a lifetime supply of generous ass cheek. “You’re kidding about the pizza, right?”

“Kidding? I never kid. Do you dare to challenge the huntress? And move your hands away from my κώλος before I…Bernie? Do you think I’m getting too…uh, soft? Am I becoming a pillow princess? I heard someone called that on TV.” Artemis started to tie her tunic over her shoulder.

“No. You’re the most perfect being I’ve ever seen. Please. Don’t put all of that cool stuff away…”

“Couldn’t you just kill him? That worked before. And then we can be together.”

“Shiva and I are no longer an item. Now…” Kali wiped away a green tear. “The bastard found — sniff — himself someone else to dance on top of him throughout eternity. The Nordic goddess, Frigg. Nice name, eh? He calls her his Swedish Meatball Tenderizer. Frigg. Friggin’ biotch.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to rush you or anything.”

“It’s okay. I’m over it. He told me that she was better (sniffles) than I was (tears) when it came to walking on his bad back. I tried to kill her, but she kept bouncing back like a…(sniff)…a…”

“A Wham-O Super Ball?”

“Yeah. You are so smart, Frankie.” Suddenly Kali began to seethe. She started to twist the table’s edge. She was getting wound up.

“Don’t rip up the table, doll face. I’m pals with Paulie, the owner.”

“Dauna told me about to a party at Dahmer’s Humanitarian Cafe tonight. They’ll be serving up MacHeath’s crew for our entertainment. Let’s say we go over there and you can watch me burn off some energy stomping on MacHeath’s loonies.”

“Sure, Sugar lips. We need to find you some sacrifices, baby. Let’s ditch this clambake.”

Thousands of years ago, the TPN was set up as a web of psychic protection for plant life around the globe.

The TPN does not accept monetary donations from even plant-loving humans. Throughout the history of plant systematics, the TPN’s green members have all witnessed friends, relatives, seedlings and saplings chopped or mowed down, and mashed into paper currency for humans.

Today,T.K. was listening to the plant-based network while on a stakeout for his carnivorous friends at Interpol. His assignment was related to the protection of front yards everywhere. Specifically, he was there to protect the prestige of the original Don Featherstone lawn flamingos produced by Union Plastics.

Interpol believed North Korea intended to flood the free world with cut-rate birds. If left unchecked, the commies could ruin lawns everywhere with cheap knock-offs.Until now, the free world’s front yards—the ones blessed by genuine Featherstones—had been worth defending against marauding juvenile delinquents — the ones whose parents never lifted a hand to smack some goddamned manners into the noisy “little bastids.” Yeah, the same “little bastids” who made life a living hell for the half human half log, T.K., by tipping him over in public, just because they thought it was “funny.” Brats.

Waiting. Waiting.

Beneath the hot afternoon sun on a quiet Tuesday, T.K. tilted himself a few more degrees to the east, to help improve the reception on the grassy slope.

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Bernie ‘The God Whisperer’ is taking a stroll, minding his own f*cking business, on an unusually warm December night in Cleveland, when this bullsh*t happens >>>>>

There were bicycle lights approaching him from the corner. An attractive silvery haired couple, dressed in spiffy casual wear, wheeled up to the curb, smiled with perfect teeth and stopped.

“Where in Hades have you been?” the beautiful silver-haired woman said to Bernie as she swiped at him with her freshly manicured nails, tearing the collar of his cheap Hawaiian shirt.

“Hey, What the?”

“Art thou Cupcaecius?” asked her handsome executive-type companion with the obligatory sweater tied around his neck. They both looked as though they’d just ridden off the cover of every other issue of Molten Silver magazine.

“No!” Bernie backed into a rubbish can and fell. Who were these two new gods with a healthy active lifestyle?

Leto pulled her bike onto the pavement and bent down toward a display in the hotel’s gift shop window. “Look, Zeus! It’s a darling car charm. It looks just like Artie’s little car! That’s cute.” Leto looked down at the pathetic human cowering on the sidewalk. “Is that real sapphire?” she asked.

“Are you asking me, m-m-m-ma’am?” Bernie looked up at the the woman wide-eyed. Leto winked at him and whispered. “You can call me Λητώ, or Λατώ.”

“Zeus and Leto?” He bowed his head in respect. “Artie, I mean Artemis told me that you’d banished her from Olympus.”

“Human!” Without warning, Leto grabbed Bernie by his nose. “Listen to thy husband, Waffle of Dung!”

I’ve managed to piss off Zeus and Leto.

Zeus pointed a finger and zapped Bernie’s trap with a tiny lightning bolt. Bernie doubled over onto the pavement then smiled when he’d realized that yet another strand on the human-proof trap had snapped. Only the gods have the power to remove this thing.

Thus spoke Zeus: “Buying my daughter cheap trinkets will not make her more beautiful. It is because of her that ‘things’ become beautiful. That is the generous nature of a goddess.”

“Owwwww,” croaked Bernie as he pulled himself to his feet by grabbing the bricks on the wall. They act like they’ve been smokin’ incense.

Zeus spoketh again: “You’ve seen Artemis improve the luster of a diamond, the scent of a gardenia and the spirit of the untamed sea. How much proof of the divine doth thou needest, Bernie?”

“Your daughter ith, I mean is amazing.”

“Artemis must remain pure,” said Leto. “Junk food! Television! A girl her age should be hunting across the heavens instead of twiddling…thumbs…with you.”

“Twiddling? We haven’t twiddled any thumbs. How old is Artie?” asked Bernie.

Leto stopped his cruel hand. “Stop. What my husband should explain to you, you bug, is that the twiddling of thumbs is the way we profess our love on Olympus. If Artemis twiddled with you, we are obliged to spare your miserable life. However, if we find out that you two have twaddled, we will kill you a thousand times in a thousand ways. And to answer your question, our virrrrrgin daughter is five thousand, give or take a hundred years,” said Zeus.

Five thousand years. And no boinky-woinky? Bernie thought.

“What my husband is trying to say is—what did I just hear you think, young man? ‘Boinky-woinky?’”

“Five thousand years?” Bernie asked again.

“Maybe this upstart needs me to sling a bolt of lightning up his κώλος,” said Zeus.

“No, Zuzu,” said Leto.

“Psssst! Don’t call me that,” Zeus snapped back.

She calls her husband, the ruler of Olympus, Zuzu? Thought Bernie, trying not to laugh out loud.

“Lightning! That’s my husband’s solution for everything. So, Bernie, do you know the damage you have done to our daughter with the bad food and her clothes?”

“What did I do to her clothes? I have no control over the goddess. She loves to shop and eat.”

“She is wearing, thanks to your flea-bag cat, a handful of white downy feathers, placed in three strategic locations, upon splashes of perfumed garlic infused olive oil given to her by your cat, Bomba!”

“For your plebeian amusement, I imagine,” added Zeus.

Her curves oiled and writhing, succulent and wearing a handful of feathers. And no boinky for five thousand years. The two Olympian gods could hear every dirty thought.

“Writhing! You worm! I shall slay you!” said Leto.

Zeus blocked his wife’s right arm from smiting. “I am only going to spare you because Artemis swore to protect you. Our daughter, is pure, Mr. Cake. Purity is what she does.”

“This relationship wasn’t my idea,” said Bernie. “I think that you should talk to her pal, Dauna,”

“Who?” asked Leto.

“Dauna, the shark goddess from Kupaio,” said Bernie. “She asked your daughter to watch over me. Have you two met Soapy Puppies, I mean Her Sauciness? She is what you might call a bad influence. Peligro—ow!”

“What dost thou think, Zuzu!” said Leto.

Bernie switched gears, from suppressing pain to suppressing a major guffaw.

“Remember the wedding that we couldn’t go to in Fiji, dearest? The one we sent Artemis to?”

Leto turned to Bernie. “I wish we could have gone to the pre-wedding party with the mbolo worm buffet. I love worms. We had the nosoi flu at the time, Bernie. You must have heard of Dauna. What do you know about her all-knowing-all-seeing-all-fucking, Zuzie.”

Is Zeus sweating? thought Bernie. Zuzie! Don’t laugh.

“Oh, yes. You mean Daucina. That Dauna!” said Zeus, “is just your average goddess, dear. A nobody.”

“Oh, I remember,” said Leto. “The oracles spoke of her. ‘The steamy one with a mouth like a pigsty gutter who spoketh offenses from the pools of the god Cess, and a great set of cans.’”

“The poor thing suffers from Tourette Syndrome,” explained Zeus. “She may come on like a gluttonous eater of slack serpents, but she’s harmless. I checked.”

“Thou hast checked thine trollop, Zuzu?” asked the angry Leto.

Bernie was forced to jump in. “Dauna is not a trollop, great goddess! She’s just …uh, friendly. Yeah, that’s it. Friendly.”

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The goddess refastened Orion’s Belt around her waist and said, “Remember, I’m a goddess. Not some half-assed straaaaanger. Let’s go, Bomba. We know when we’re not appreciated.”

“Hey, that’s my cat! You can’t take my cat! Wait! I mean, ouch!”

“Yeah… It was nice, Bernie. Sorry about your sheets. Goodnight!”

“What? What about my sheets?” Bernie looked toward his feet. “Holy!” This hoity-toity Artemis person had left a cosmic trail of liquid shimmering moon dust the length of his entire body. The sheets, indeed, smelled like gardenias.

“Don’t go!” Bernie let out the most pitiful wail that the world had heard since that god-forsaken day in 1942 when Bambi’s mom was shot.

Artemis, soft as the moonlight upon her fair skin, leaned over the suffering Bernie’s pillow. “Calm down, earthling. Breeeeeeathe.” She reached between her thighs and produced a golden flower. “Peace and love, Mr. Establishment!” Magically, she’d made him laugh. And so, so pretty. She twirled the alien blossom, beneath his nose.

Bernie’s brain flipped upside-down within his skull.

Bomba licked his paws as he stared out of the window, embarrassed for his damaged human. His new stripes were blushing pink. The cat tried to console Bernie. “I too tried to resist her too,” Bomba said with his eyes.“But then…the cheeeeeeseburgers…”

“The sun will be rising soon, Bernie.” Artemis patted Bernie’s exhausted little head. “Its safe to sleep now, but from now on, you’ll have to do your sleeping at work like everyone else.”

Artemis petted the cat with her right hand while she attempted to hold Bernie’s arms in place beneath the spread of her infinite thighs. Somehow, thanks to his sturdy American pioneer upbringing, Bernie had managed to cup a mighty goddess ass cheek. He’d never felt anything so smooth. Though the pain rushed in like a wave, Bernie bravely refused to release his firm grip. He found out that it was foolish to challenge the gods, as Artemis slapped him so hard that he imagined his head unraveling as it spun over the bleachers at Ebbets Field. She’d made him pay dearly, for his indiscretion.

Bomba purred and pulsed with new blue stripes as he faded away. The cat’s smile was all that remained until the yellow sun peeked into Bernie’s room.

Artemis leaned her forever body back and away from Bernie. When he saw his dream melt into the morning light, away from his grasp, he let out the most pitiful wail that the world had ever heard…since, well, the preceding wail—you know, the Bambi one.

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In this scene, Dauna the Fijian shark goddess, owner and only waitress of Donette’s Cafe on the Bolsa Chico pier, and owner of her own coffee empire is trying to cheer up Bolsa Chico’s Surf Patrol chief who has just been scandalized by his wife across international news….Dauna suffers from Tourette Syndrome, cursed because she used Gods name, in vain, one two many times in her 3000 years on Earth….

“C’mon, Chief snap out of it. One day you’ll fall in love again. Hey, look! I allllllsooooo…” Dauna bent toward Bernie, and reached behind herself “Oh, there it is!” …to reveal… “Ooh! I think that this may be a magic happy birthday hat for you, chief! It is!” She pulled the shiny hat from below her skirt. “I’ve been warming this up for you, hun.” It was a foil hat and the crinkles in the metal made it lookhappy. She sat down, and presented him with the consecrated flat hat. She opened it up and put it on his sorry head. “It’s magic! You never know, right? It might be. Wow! And It’s so toasty warm. Feel!”

“Ouch!”

“Muy caliente, eh?” Dauna, stood up and announced to all, “WHAT WOULD YOU EXPECT AFTER SPENDING AN HOUR NESTLED BETWEEN THE HOTTEST ASS CHEEKS in…uh…Oops. Sorry, folks! Not really.” Monsieur Tourette was speaking through Dauna today as if she were a tawdry ventriloquist’s dummy.

She turned and whispered to Bernie, “Did I say something dirty again, hun? Hopeless! I better just go and fetch your…… FUCKIN’ EGGS!” She sashayed to the kitchen and returned a few moments later. “Here they are! Hot, soft and oooey-gooey. Like…me.”

“Huh?” She tossed the plate on Bernie’s table and left him to wallow in his misery. He absentmindedly picked up his fork, and that’s when he heard a choir begin to sing. A choir at the end of the Balsa Chico Pier? Bernie looked up and out the restaurant window and saw only Sol, the restaurant’s mascot seagull who was known for his huge loose bladder and perfect aim on people’s heads. Sol was eating from a drunk’s bait bucket. Bernie heard a chirp and looked up to see another Donette’s ‘regular,’ Dwayne the lizard, scurrying across the ceiling.

My damned life couldn’t get more fucked up.

#

“God Over Easy.”

The sound of the heavenly Choir resumed. Bernie looked up. Nothing there. He turned back to his breakfast.

What Bernie saw next was a face staring at him from his sunny-side eggs. Maybe it was the pepper making the design, or the way that Reynaldo the cook had routinely over cooked them.

“You didn’t do a Linda Lovelace on the Polish sausage, did you? I don’t do Heimlich.” She looked down at Bernie’s plate of sunny-side eggs, and did indeed see the smiling face of Jesus, in all of his shining glory. Bernie was nearly choking. Unable to grasp the conversation between the waitress and the eggs. “You didn’t RSVP!” Dauna told the eggs. “Are you coming to my wedding in a few weeks?”

Bernie felt paralyzed.

“I’m working on my comeback TV special, shark goddess” said the runny Messiah. “How about I show up at your honeymoon, instead?”

“Hardy har har, smart ass. Stick to preaching.”

“Why are you flirting with Bernie?” asked Jesus. “Poor guy.”

“Lupta, the sage of Kupaio, told me that I must protect him. I don’t know why. Look at this busted up schmo, J.C. He’s feeling really down. Right now, he’s the saddest man in the world. I’m just trying to cheer up the dumb lug. Can I get you some coffee or something, chicken fruit?” she said to the sunny-side son of God.

“Chicken fruit? Have you been behaving yourself? Why are you here, God Junior?”

“I’m honing my rusty social skills. Ahem! Commandment number eight: Thou shalt not steal. Are you listening to me, Dauna? Do not steal Bernie Benedict’s heart. He’s in pain.”